Sorry for the long absence. There’s been a LOT of stuff going on for me lately, much of it positive. We’ll talk soon.
And yes, I really am planning to post those Columbus road trip pictures eventually.
Today, some very good things are happening for me, which I’ll talk about at some later point.
But I’m also very sad. Jane Jacobs, who was without question the past century’s most important voice on urban planning and other issues died this morning in her adopted hometown of Toronto. It’s difficult to express how much her ideas and writings have influenced the way I think about cities. And I think about cities a lot, so she was a pretty major figure in my world. Jane Jacobs was one of those few famous people on earth I would really like to have met and talked with at some point in my life. In fact, she was probably number one on that list.
This paragraph from The Death and Life of Great American Cities, originally composed in 1961 to describe the destruction wrought by the urban renewal programs of the previous decade, rings even truer today:
But look what we have built with the first several billions: Low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Middle-income housing projects which are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation, sealed against any buoyancy or vitality of city life. Luxury housing projects that mitigate their inanity, or try to, with a vapid vulgarity. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums, who have fewer choices of loitering places than others. Commercial centers that are lack-luster imitations of standardized suburban chain-store shopping. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the re-building of cities. This is the sacking of cities.
She was equally comfortable fighting leftist utopian and right-wing anti-urban foes. She stood up to Robert Moses and won, something no one had really attempted before. She wrote a book that should be — and now, finally, is — required reading for anyone entering the field of urban planning. She just “got it” in a way very few people ever have.
The world needs a Jane Jacobs in it as much (or more) today as it did forty years ago. She will be very much missed.
If you’d told me ten years ago that I’d be faxing a purchase contract today to buy a 3000 square foot ranch-style house in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with a boy from Fresno, I’d have told you that you were out of your mind.
I’d have been wrong.
We’re home…
Random thoughts for a Thursday afternoon:
- Moron of the week: Timothy Dwayne Carter of Reidsville NC, who decided that he couldn’t survive his trial on drug and domestic violence charges without carrying a dozen vials of crack into the courtroom with him.
- Anyone who really believes there will be no changes at the San Jose Mercury News under its new owners has obviously never spent the 45-50 seconds it takes to read the same owner’s Oakland Tribune on the average day.
- There hasn’t been a first-run episode of The Andy Griffith Show since 1968, but it’s apparently still essential to the ongoing profitability of CBS. I’m not sure if that says more about the strength of Andy or the weakness of CBS.
Gosh darn it, y’know what we need? We need us a Constitutional amendment to protect The Star Spangled Banner. Yup. That’s just what we need. Uh huh. That’d fix everything.
So I’m moving away from Charlotte again. I did it once before, in 1989, and once again in 1991, if you count that two-month temporary gig here as a period of residence, which I don’t.
It’s not like my flight from San Francisco. I’ve never left Charlotte because I hated it here. I like it, all in all. In fact, we had a real estate agent in both Charlotte and Winston-Salem until just a few weeks ago. It just always seems to end up making more sense to be someplace else. In 1989, it was because I was going back to school full-time in Greensboro. This time, it’s because we’ve found a house and an environment we like in Winston-Salem, which also has the benefit of being both cheaper and closer to my family.
I’m not severing any emotional ties this time around. I don’t really know many more people here than I did last June when we arrived, so I’m not particularly broken up about leaving. There are some things I’ll miss, of course, but it’s not like I’ll be all that far away anyhow. I can be at Gus’ Sir Beef or the Landmark in about 70-80 minutes, depending on the condition of I-85 through Salisbury.
Last year, we moved from Neilsen DMA #6 (SF) to #27 (Charlotte). And now we’re off to Greensboro (#47) which falls right between Albuquerque (#46) and Las Vegas (#48). Stay tuned. It’s May Sweeps. You never know what other surprises I might spring on you so I can compete successfully with the finale of “7th Heaven”, and of The WB itself, for that matter…
I took a bit of a sentimental journey on Monday. Ever since I moved back to Charlotte last year, I’ve been curious about my old apartment, the one I rented in 1988 and 1989 and have always thought of as my favorite apartment ever. As it turns out, the very same apartment became vacant this week, so I popped over to the real estate office, checked out a key, and took a stroll down memory lane, as it were.
That particular period of my life is sort of “lost” for me now. I have very few pictures, and absolutely none of this particular apartment. I was very drunk very much of the time, and I’d also stopped doing much in the way of journal entries. So I’m always interested in finding little tidbits that will jog my memory of that last year in Charlotte.
I found that my somehwat run-down flat was now in even worse shape than in 1988. What looked to be the very same shit-brown carpet (with the very same stains) covered the floors, and the very same old window-unit air conditioner was in the bedroom. The bathroom was filthy, and the kitchen sink had the rust stains which come from years of tenants who aren’t very proactive about washing the dishes. There was a new thermostat, but it was powering the same old wall-unit furnace. Mysteriously, the relatively new (in 1988) bedroom door had been replaced by a much older one.
But the place still had its endearing qualities. It had a nice layout and a great location, and there were more closets than you usually find in apartments from that era. This one-bedroom pad was about the same size as the two-bedroom place where I spent thirteen years in San Francisco, and wasn’t in much worse shape. It rents for $450 now, up from $250 when I was there in 1988. I wouldn’t live there now, but I don’t question my decision to do so back then, either.
I think I was expecting some mystical, quasi-religious experience, sort of like when George visited the tenement where he grew up on that Christmas episode of “The Jeffersons”. It didn’t end up being quite so emotional, really, but it did offer some intersting perspective on how my life has changed in light of our upcoming move. I enjoyed being an “edgy” 24-year-old. I think I’ll enjoy being a boring 41-year-old with a house (and without a hangover) even more.
It’s Confederate History Week in Mecklenburg County.
I understand that the factors leading to the American Civil War went considerably deeper than “to enslave or not to enslave”. I also understand that Hitler’s rise to power in Germany was the result of numerous complex issues, most of which weren’t related to anti-Semitism.
We do not, however, have Nazi Heritage Festivals. We have World War II memorials. Would it have been so fucking difficult for the county commission (I no longer feel compelled to capitalize them) to have adopted the alternative “Civil War Remembrance Month” proposal instead? It’s not “historical revisionism” to suggest that we reflect on the whole fight rather than just on the losing side.
Whether he admits to it or not, anyone promoting “Confederate heritage” or flying a Confederate flag has a very specific social and political agenda in mind.
I don’t think I’m terribly neurotic, and I don’t have a lot of phobias. I’m not afraid of flying, even though I don’t really like it because it’s uncomfortable and inconvenient. I don’t fear heights, and depsite my extreme distaste for them, I also don’t exactly fear large crowds. I was even spared the most common phobia of all: the fear of public speaking. I prefer not to do it very often, because I don’t think I’m very good at it, but the thought of speaking in front of a crowd doesn’t give me panic attacks either.
There are things I’m afraid to do, like riding on motorcycles, or using drugs, or watching “Friends” re-runs, but those are rational fears, involving things which really are dangerous and could cause me great harm.
As far as debilitating irrrational fears go, I’m limited to two really big ones.
Number one is simple and not really all that debilitating. I cannot watch a hypodermic needle pierce skin, whether live, on TV, or in a movie. I just can’t do it. The only time this was really a problem was when I got out of the hospital in 2001 and had to give myself injections of a blood thinner for a week. Either way, this phobia pretty much guarantees I’ll never be an IV drug abuser.
The second is related to claustrophobia. The thing I fear most in this world is being in an enclosed space where I can’t stand up or move. I’m not talking about elevators; they don’t bother me. I mean things like crawl spaces, the trunks of cars, full-body casts, or the Jefferies tubes on a starship. An MRI, of course, would be out of the question for me without complete sedation — or, oddly enough, unless they’d let me stand up and be vertical in the tube. I know a lot of people would find these situations uncomfortable, but they fill me with such an overwhleming sense of panic that I sometimes even have trouble going to sleep if I’m exposed to something on TV just before bed which makes me think of it.
The third is a little more obscure. I’ve talked about my phone phobia before. I’m not a huge fan of talking on the phone in general, but what freaks me out most of all is making unexpected calls to people I don’t usually speak on the phone with. The idea of making the call and asking for the specific individual I need to speak with can cause a sense of dread which can keep me from thinking of anything else for days in advance.
This fear doesn’t apply either to complete strangers nor to people I know well and call regularly. I don’t have a problem with making business calls. And if I know the person on the other end is expecting me to call at a certain time, I’m fine. The problem comes when I call relatives or acquaintances I’m just not used to speaking with and do it “out of the blue”. Maybe I’m worried I’m bothering them, or maybe it’s because I don’t know what they really think of me, or whatever.
Yes, I know it’s irrational. I also know it flat out terrifies me and can make me break out in a cold sweat. In fact, before the advent of email, it probably kept me from going on numerous second dates. It’s also why I’m so anal about writing thank you notes to my aunts and uncles rather than just calling to thank them.
Sorry. I haven’t revealed any neuroses here in a while, and I figured I was about due…
This is known to many Winston-Salem residents as “the K&W cafeteria that blew up”. It was a really cool, mod 1960s location that was connected to the Sheraton Motor Inn at Knollwood Street and old I-40. Until it exploded.
Today, the site houses the world headquarters of Krispy Kreme, a company which is apparently more in danger of imploding these days.